Telepresence Robot Lets You Play A Hand Of Cards

Virtual card games proliferate the interwebs, but this card-playing telepresence device is unique. [Patrick] calls the project Vanna, and we’d bet that’s an homage to the tile-flipping TV star [Vanna White]. Much like she flips the blank tiles to reveal letters, this device can flip the hand of cards either face up or face down.

Each of the six card trays is connected to a stepper motor. The local player deals the hands, placing each card in a tray so that it faces the webcam for the remote player. That remote player has an on-screen interface that can discard by tilting the tray forward and dropping the card on its face, or play a card by tilting toward to the local player so they can see its face value. All becomes clear in the clip after the break.

The hardware is USB controlled from a Windows machine thanks to the PIC 18F4585 which controls it. But it should be quite simple to get it talking to the OS of your choice.

I think it’s a web enabled version of this http://a.abcnews.com/images/GMA/abc_gma_wheel_130426_wg.jpg which might mean that the cards are dealt to it manually and then flip round to show them to the player. If that’s how it works I don’t know why you wouldn’t just broadcast a person dealing cards via webcam.